I’m in that twitchy stage of just-before-book-launch where I can’t quite settle to anything– so even though I have a pile of new books I would usually be raring to read, I finally gave up and resorted to one of my favorite old comfort reads.

That comfort read would be Elsie Lee’s The Spy at the Villa Miranda, 1960s romantic suspense in which our heroine goes on vacation after a nasty divorce, finds herself swept up in international espionage (as one does), and, of course, totally sorts everyone and everything out (also as one does if one is an Elsie Lee heroine).

I hadn’t done this on purpose, but it was actually a highly appropriate read for Band of Sisters launch week: the heroine is a Mt. Holyoke grad who takes a job as traveling companion to a retired Radcliffe professor, so there’s a lot of Seven Sisters in there.  And I had never realized before just how much those Elsie Lee heroines are in the mold of the women of the Smith College Relief Unit: capable of turning their hands to anything and solving any problem in any sorts of circumstances (while quipping madly).

This is my vintage 80s copy, purchased at the school book fair circa 1988.  Isn’t it a wonderfully awful cover?  Also deeply unrepresentative of the content.  But I love it because I’ve had it forever.

Once I’ve soothed myself with Elsie Lee, I have a few ARCs I’ve been looking forward to reading, a new Trisha Ashley, a new Jodi Taylor, and, of course, The Masque of the Black Tulip for the March installment of the Pink Carnation Read Along, so the real issue will be which to read first!

What have you been reading this week?